GOP Hopeful Hinckley: Reid Shuts Down Senate for Business

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Barry Hinckley of Rhode Island tells Newsmax.TV that the GOP must wrest control of that legislative body from the Democrats because Majority Leader Harry Reid “has closed the Senate for business.”

Insisting that that fresh faces are needed in Congress to revitalize the nation’s economy, Hinckley noted that the Senate has not passed a budget in more than 1,100 days. Senators must work with the “amazing” pieces of legislation that the Republican-led House has passed, he said.

“If Harry Reid keeps the Senate, the Democrats keep the Senate, it will be the end of this economy as we know it,” Hinckley said during the exclusive interview with Newsmax.

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“People that caused the problem are incapable of solving the problem,” said Hinckley, who said he was speaking from his perspective as a businessman who co-created a company and created jobs.

“We need to send new faces to Washington that have Main Street experience. That’s the key. The career politicians have buried us in debt and they’ve crushed our economy with their policies, taxes, and regulations.

“The real-world experience business experience like mine can solve the problems that we have,” he said.

Blaming both Democrats and Republicans in Washington for overspending and hurting his state, Hinckley said, “It’s a career politics problem. Folks have been there 20 to 30 years, and that’s when we racked up this amazing debt.”

Since 1980, when President Ronald Reagan faced about $800 billion in debt, “we’ve tacked on another $15 trillion since then . . . Folks from both parties have caused the problem, and that’s why we need new faces.”

Rhode Island can’t recover until the nation recovers, because of the smallness of The Ocean State, he said.

“We don’t have a Texas-style economy to pull ourselves up. We need America to be thriving for Rhode Island to be thriving,” Hinckley said.

When asked about the tax code, Hinckley said it “is a mess. It’s almost 4 million words long. It’s 100 years old . . . It’s an amalgamation of carve-outs, rules, special favors for lobbyists. It crushes families. It crushes savings. It crushes investment, and it really hammers the American business. It makes American businesses uncompetitive. We need a tax code that makes American businesses the most competitive in the world so American businesses will create more jobs and more Americans will get back to work.”

Hinckley said he signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge created by Grover Norquist, founder and CEO of Americans for Tax Reform. Influenced by Florida Rep. Allen West, Hinckley said, “We cannot take one more cent from the American people until Washington controls its spending.”

Hinckley blamed excessive regulations and the tax code rather than American businesses for exporting jobs for the country’s economic morass.

“I never met an American businessman or businesswoman who would like to have their product made offshore,” he said. “They do it because our government has . . . unbusiness-friendly regulations and an unbusiness-friendly tax code.”

When asked about where Rhode Island stands on social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage, Hinckley said his state is composed of 50 percent unaffiliated voters and that people in “centrist” Rhode Island are more focused on jobs and the economy than they are about waging social battles.

Hinckley explained that his campaign revolves around four priorities: a tax code geared for the 21st century, regulation reform, term limits, and a balanced-budget amendment.

Social networking, such as the video of his son touting “economics for 5-year-olds,” provided Hinckley with an affordable and successful way to boost his campaign, Hinckley said.

“It was an Internet sensation,” he said of the video. “In one week, we had 310,000 views.”

In addition, the video has been a fundraising boon for Hinckley, raising more than $100,000 in just a few days, as Newsmax reported last week.